Critical Reviews on Latin American Research - CROLAR

CROLAR Vol. 7, No.1,

Cultural Production and Political Power in Latin America

There was no longer Tlahtoani [the Mexican ruler] and Temachtiani [the teacher]. The year was 1553 and these Mexican terms were articulated at the Royal College of Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, perhaps for the first time, to name another reality: that of the viceroyalty and the priest. Later, this colonial articulation sealed a particular manner of exercising the relationship between political power and culture in Latin America, although with significant local variations. Therefore, putting these articulations into question is neither an antiquarian’s curiosity nor a cultural atavism characteristic of the periphery, and much less a harmless intellectual exercise. The present issue of CROLAR revisits these relationships in the age of global neoliberalism and its authoritarian or progressive drifts at a regional level.

There is an extensive, significant tradition of research and analysis of power and the political sphere in Latin America. Over the last few years, however, and due to disciplinary as well as political biases, approaches that circumscribe the actuality of the political to democratic processes and institutions have prevailed, hence isolating politics from its social and economic context and blurring its links to the cultural realm. Nonetheless, intellectuals, notables, mandarins, experts, and technocrats have historically nourished and masculinized those links, thus contributing to their naturalization.

On the other hand, and even though they are subjects sensitive to the exercise of political power, cultural producers have but few spaces to reflect on the ways ... more